Letter: Ryan and Rand

Joseph W. White, New Bern

Monday

Jan 14, 2013 at 12:01 AMJan 14, 2013 at 5:06 PM

On January 4th, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) voted “no” to relief funds for Hurricane Sandy victims. A fiscal conservative, he explained “it isn’t paid for,” and there was too much pork. (It was a one paragraph allocation to the National Flood Insurance Program; no pork.)

On January 4th, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) voted “no” to relief funds for Hurricane Sandy victims. A fiscal conservative, he explained “it isn’t paid for,” and there was too much pork. (It was a one paragraph allocation to the National Flood Insurance Program; no pork.) People in need? Ryan is follower of Ayn Rand’s “Objectivism,” an everyman-for-himself philosophy that emerged full blown in her opus, “Atlas Shrugged” (1957). It’s a science fiction fantasy set in the future. Premise: The “producers” (manufacturers, owners of mines, railroads, heavy industry, etc.) are locked in a struggle with a U.S. government, the “looters,” which wants to control the means of production and distribution, and the economy in the interest of the general welfare. It’s extreme libertarianism against extreme liberalism. The general population, the “moochers,” is the worthless millions who keep the looters in power. How’d this happen? It is fiction; ergo, explanation not required. But, willing suspension of belief is mandatory — big time! There are thrilling rides on trains and planes. It’s got your secret rays, a doomsday Project X, and a torture chamber! (No wonder the book was a hit with adolescents.) In protest against the looters and thankless moochers, the producers go on strike and disappear to a utopian valley made invisible by a mysterious shield. Absent the producers, industry and commerce collapse, there is massive unemployment and starvation. The producers’ leader, John Galt, seizes the air waves and broadcasts the principles of Objectivism. (The speech is 63 pages!) What has brought us here? It is the immoral notion that government has an obligation to those in need (a safety net, if you will). Objectivism teaches that each of us may — should — turn a blind eye to the needy, with moral impunity, and let the moochers fend. Galt: “I pledge my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” The bogus concept of sacrifice, as in flood relief or to fight for one’s country, was caused by thousands of years of being duped by religious leaders, “mystics,” who made it all up to control the masses. In sum, Rand, a devout atheist, condemns as immoral any obligation of person, society or government to anyone, and vice versa.

Rand may be forgiven She was a nonconformist pseudo-intellectual, Russian émigré who fled here before WWII. Uninvited, she took on the mission of warning America of the threat of Soviet communism — as if no one here knew — and presumed to tells us how to save ourselves from our own folly. She saw the boogeyman of communism in American progressivism from the labor movement to Social Security. One has to wonder if Rand ever really understood American history.

Ryan, however, is not to be excused. He read Atlas as a boy. It became his lodestar. He gives copies at Christmas. It is required reading for his congressional staff. In a speech to The Atlas Shrugged Society, he credited Rand’s inspiration for his entry into public service. He touts Objectivism’s monetary ideas: e.g. a return to the gold standard and gold coinage. Nobel economist Paul Krugman says it as nonsense. Ryan fears that the safety net will become a “comfortable hammock” for the helpless, sick, elderly and unemployed. Ryan on welfare reform, says Krugman, is just bad economics. “Draconian cuts” will hurt, not help the economy.” Ryan’s ideology is simplistic, populist aphorisms strung together randomly. It is not a coherent political philosophy. Consistent? On the one hand, he is a social conservative and devout Catholic. On the other, he is silent on Rand’s demand that abortion is “an absolute right,” and her strident atheism.

Had the November election gone the other way, Ryan would be a heartbeat away from the presidency. That he fervently embraces a novel, a sci-fi fantasy adventure, as being an instructive tomb for his political philosophy, gives one pause. One wonders if it might be the only book he’s ever read. Note: since entering the political big leagues, Ryan has become reticent on Rand and Atlas.

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